Chapter 1
Though he hadn't lived as long as some of the people he worked with, Charles Gunn had seen a great deal of things that would have been hard for anyone, with the possible exception of people living in Sunnydale, to believe. Which included fighting the undead on a nightly basis, that he had ended up working to help one of those same undead, that he had seen a pregnant vampire, the sun blotted out, fire rain from the sky, and a couple of apocalypses in the space of a year. Or that he had ended up working at a place that had once represented all the evil that existed in the world. But all those strange things seemed positively normal for the conversation that he was having now.
"Warner Bothers announced that they are going to do a film on the life of Malcolm X to be helmed by Norman Jewison" Leonard Kopell said, taking a sip from his drink. "Spike Lee pops up and says that no white man can do a realistic version of the life of a black man, especially one as prolific as this one."
"You don't think that maybe he has a point?" said Robin Wood, lifting his eyes from the pool table. "Maybe there are some things that only a black man can know ?"
"I am willing to believe that there are certain things that a black man can understand that a white man can't," said Leonard as he put his drink back on the bar, "and that fact may apply in Hollywood. But this is the man who directed 'In The Heat Of The Night' and 'A Soldier's Story.' If there is a white director who is more qualified to tell a story like this, I can't think of him."
"So what are you implying?" asked Xander. "That because a white man does a good job of painting racial harmony in movies, he is more qualified than a black man to tell this story?"
"I am saying that Spike Lee bullied a Hollywood studio and a multiple Academy Award nominee from making a movie so that he could do it himself." Leonard finished his drink. "I found it pretty hard to respect him after I heard that."
In a linear sense, Gunn knew how this discussion of "Malcolm X" had gotten started. He even knew how he had gotten roped into this situation. What he found hard to believe was that the three of them -- men who spent the days and nights fighting against the forces of evil for Angel-Slayer Inc -- were having what was, for all intents and purposes, a normal conversation about something that wasn't related to work. Even odder was the fact that they were all talking like they had been friends for years, when in fact they had known each other for less than a month.
Had it been up to Gunn, he probably wouldn't have been in this situation to begin with. It wasn't that he disliked any of them. This wasn't how he would have preferred to spend one of their all-too few nights off.
The whole scenario had actually been set into motion when Wesley and Willow had each taken Gunn aside and asked him to help with a situation that was bothering them.
Willow had come first. As she had a problem with being direct, it had taken her a couple of minutes to get to the point.
"How have things been working out with Xander?"
Gunn wasn't surprised that Xander's name had come up. Though he wasn't as aware of it as some of the others had been, he had known that Xander was having a difficult time adjusting to the loss of two of the most important women in his life. When Xander had come to him of his own free will and asked if he might work training the Slayers instead of in the science department, Gunn had agreed . He didn't know if this particular change would be ideal, but it was clear from Xander's behavior that he needed to change something that he was doing soon or risk falling to pieces.
Xander had seemed a little livelier after changing jobs (he started showing up to the board meetings more, in any case) but he still didn't seem that animated to Gunn. Apparently Willow had noticed it too.
"Work is only half the problem" she had said. "One of the big things that we always did at home was hang out together. Mainly at the Bronze... we've told you about it, right?"
"Yeah. You want to ask him to go club hopping?"
Willow shook her head. "We've done that. Xander has never had a lot of guy friends. He never complained much about it in Sunnydale, but I know that there were at least a couple of occasions that he said as much. I think now that there are some men that he can hang out with, maybe it would help him regain his balance."
Gunn realized what Willow appeared to be asking. At first he didn't know if he liked the idea. It wasn't about Xander: he thought that the young man had lot of guts and could be very funny . They had a lot of common threads that could make for lively conversation. But he had so little free time that Gunn wondered if he wanted to spend it with somebody that he worked with rather than the old running buddies he didn't see as much. Then he decided that Xander's current problems mattered more then his feelings
So he agreed that he would talk with Xander about it. Before Gunn could ask him, however, he ran into Wesley. That conversation was a little more awkward, as all of them probably would be as long as Fred was still trying to decide which one of them she wanted to be with.
Eventually, he came to the point: "You know about some of the problems we've been having with Leonard."
Gunn nodded. A few weeks after they had officially set up shop as Angel-Slayer Incorporated, Leonard Kopell had arrived on their doorstep. He had revealed that he was something of a seer, particularly in regard to the people who ran their new venture, and therefore was part of their group. The problem was, after they had saved his life, he was not particularly grateful. He didn't particularly want to associate with them and he was reluctant to help them anymore.
"We've been having a real problem trying to work with him."
"The way I heard it, he has the problem." said Gunn. "The guy still doesn't want to hang out with us, right?" Wesley nodded. "You know he may have more sense then the rest of us put together."
"I'm not saying that I don't sympathize with his problem. But there are other issues to factor in. We need his help in order to figure out what this great evil is and we need to convince him that this is a fight worth having."
"So what do you think we should do, Wes? If we're going to say that we're the good guys, we can't bully him into joining us," said Gunn.
"I know." Wesley sighed. "We can't use the stick, so we're going to have use the carrot."
Gunn didn't particularly care for this metaphor (it sounded a little gay) but accepted it as the Watcher's way of talking. "So what, we're going to bribe him into joining us?"
"No. We have to convince him that we're good people. That we are his friends. And that, supernatural trappings aside, we're pretty normal."
"I don't think 'normal' is a word that applies to any of us, but I see your point. What I don't see is what this has to do with me."
Again Wesley seemed flustered.
"Has Willow talked to you about... Xander?"
A picture began to form in Gunn's head. "You know, we've got to figure out a better way to send messages." Before Wesley could speak, Gunn said, "You want me to go to the bookstore where Leonard works and ask him to spend a night out with me and Xander?" Wesley nodded. " "Okay, why is everyone naming me Mr. Swinging Good Times?"
"Because you are as close to being a normal person as anyone here." said Wesley. "The fact is you're the only person here who's made any kind of friends outside of where you work."
Gunn thought this was a pretty high compliment, but decided it was better to be cool. "And that makes me qualified to be a party guy?"
"You're also closer to his age than the rest of us." When Gunn gave Wes a look, he added: "I know that shouldn't matter, but I think it will. You might be able to reach him in ways the rest of us can't."
Right, cause a white boy from Sunnydale and a brother from South Central got so much in common. Gunn thought but did not say. For one thing, it was rather bigoted of him. For another, he knew that it wasn't true -- the man had been seeing visions of him and his friends for three years. They had that in common at least. And last, but certainly not least, he was better at some social things than the others.
So after work he had gone to Murder Press and asked Leonard if he had wanted to go out to dinner. The young man had hesitated for a moment (possibly considering all the hidden reasons that could lie behind the offer) before agreeing.
Later that day, he had asked Xander the same question, casually mentioning that Leonard was coming along. Xander needed less time before agreeing. As an afterthought, and perhaps to balance the fact that he was going out with two white guys, he had asked Robin to come along as well.
Things had started out a little awkwardly at first. Xander had begun the conversation by asking Robin what it had been like to grow up fighting demons without any real powers. Robin had gotten two words into his response when Leonard said: "Hold it."
Everyone had turned to him. He shrugged but after a moment said, "Could we please not talk shop?"
Gunn looked at Leonard. "You know that fighting demons and vampires is at the center of what we do, right?"
"I am perfectly aware of that, Charles." Leonard said using his first name without hesitation. "And I am aware that vampires, witches, boogedy beasties and other assorted things that go bump in the night are at the crux of your work. However, I don't particularly want to spend the entire night out talking about it. That wouldn't go very far towards to convincing me that this is a nice normal place to work, would it?"
Gunn looked at Leonard in shocked, though he wasn't sure if it was because Leonard had figured out the point of this get-together before the others had, or because he had actually out-thought Wesley. "All right. We won't talk about business."
About thirty seconds of awkward silence passed before Xander spoke again. "Gunn," he started awkwardly, "is it really true that you haven't seen a movie since 'Malcolm X'?"
It was a complete 180 from the previous conversation, but Gunn knew that Xander was good at verbal reversals. "Yeah, that's right." . Robin and Leonard looked at Gunn with varying shades of incredulity. Leonard spoke first. "What, have you been so busy fighting demons that you can't go to a movie?"
"Well that's part of it, but mainly I was pissed about Denzel losing the Oscar."
"You've got to be kidding," said Robin.
"You saying that he wasn't robbed?"
"Oh he was robbed, but I didn't let that huge oversight stop me from going to see 'The Fugitive'."
Xander looked at Leonard. "You got a take on this?"
Leonard thought about it. "Well I think that Denzel gave the best performance of the men who were nominated. However, I believe that there were some men who weren't nominated whose work was as good, if not better."
"Really?" Gunn was intrigued. "Who?"
"Well, I'm a bit prejudiced cause I was a big fan, but Jack Lemmon did a hell of a job in 'Glengarry Glen Ross.'
Leonard, it turned out, was a real movie buff. Using this topic as a starting point combined with some of the information from the Wolfram and Hart entertainment division they spent dinner and most of the evening discussing film, film history, the award seasons and the generally poor state of film and television. Pretty soon they were talking as if they had known each other for a long time.
"Spike and Denzel...they don't have contracts with us, do they?" Xander asked.
"No, I checked in on that about a week after we took over." said Gunn. "Wolfram and Hart has been a bit lax in its affirmative action policies. They didn't really start taking on black clients until about three years ago."
"I guess this is one place where we should be glad that equal opportunity doesn't play a big part." said Leonard. "Do you know the names of anyone you do have as clients?"
Robin looked at Leonard. "I thought you didn't want to 'talk shop'."
Leonard looked a little sheepish. "I didn't know this was going to come up."
Gunn took pity on him. "Lorne's in charge of the entertainment division, so he has most of the details."
"I actually asked him about it a week ago." They turned to Xander. "What...I wanted him to confirm a couple of names in music." When the stares continued, he replied: "I wanted to know if Britney Spears was really a client."
"Is she?" asked Robin.
"No, but Christina Aguilera is."
"In the film industry?"
"Let me see: Ridley Scott, Paul Thomas Anderson, Jerry Bruckhiemer, Elizabeth Hurley, Greg Kinnear, John Travolta, Drew Barrymore -- those are the most obvious ones."
"Any studio heads?" asked Gunn.
"Paramount, Universal, Columbia, and someone at DreamWorks signed in '99" said Xander.
Gunn was about to say that explained a lot when he looked over at Leonard. The young man seemed to be zoning out.
"Leonard, you okay?" He turned around.
"Yeah, I just... felt funny all of a sudden. "The kid shrugged it off. "Does Wolfram and Hart have anything to do with the Oscars?"
"I don't know. I think that it depends on the clientele," said Gunn.
"I hope so. There have been some nominations and awards where the only things that make sense is due to supernatural involvement," said Robin.
"I guess we'll never know for certain about these things. It's not like the members of the Arts and Sciences are ever gonna explain anything," said Leonard.
"Actually, something funny happened when Jasmine took over California," Gunn said.
"Yeah, 'cause when a Big Bad is in charge its a laugh-a-minute," said Xander.
"It's just that everybody in L.A. was so polite and receptive, there were a lot of weird things going on," said Gunn. "And at one point, the president of the Academy came on TV and apologized on behalf of the Academy for some snubs."
"What did he say?" Even Robin was curious now,.
"First, he apologized to Peter Jackson for not nominating him for Best Director, then they apologized for not nominating 'Far From Heaven', 'About Schmidt', 'Minority Report' and a lot of the other good films that year." Gunn smiled in remembrance. "They also apologized to Michael Moore for booing him. Then they started apologizing for some of the films that did win."
"Like 'The Hours'?" said Xander. "I could never figure why that film was nominated."
"Actually, they went back a little. I believe they apologized for giving Best Picture to 'Gladiator', 'Braveheart', 'Forest Gump' and 'Dances With Wolves'.".
"But not 'Titanic'?" asked Robin.
Gunn shook his head. "They said they had arranged it so that James Cameron would never be allowed to make another film, and we'll just have to be satisfied with that."
"I'd appreciate having the three hours I spent sitting through that waste of celluloid," said Xander. "Honestly, if it came to a choice between fighting a Chaos demon or seeing the movie again, I'd take the demon. That would be less painful and be over a lot faster."
"Watch it. We're headed back into work and that's out, right Leonard?" There was no response. Gunn was about to speak when he noticed Leonard. He had not only gotten very quiet, he had begun to appear unusually pale. "Leonard, you okay?"
The young man didn't reply right away. Gunn was about to ask again, when Leonard spoke. "I'm sorry. It's just. I feel...like something's coming."
The others gathered around, all of them knowing what this could mean. "Do you feel a vision coming on?" asked Robin.
"I don't know. Maybe. It doesn't feel like a vision. It seems... stronger somehow. Like some force was... comiiiiiiiiiiii-"
Gunn had watched Cordelia have visions for two years before she had become part demon. And even after Leonard had told him that his visions were nothing like hers, he still thought that his would at least seem familiar when they hit. Now as Leonard's voice began to simultaneously trail off and grow longer, he realized for the first time that this was a whole new ballgame..
"iiiiiaaaaahhhhaa...." Suddenly Leonard fell to the ground, quivering like a plate of gelatin. Xander and Robin moved with Gunn to pick him up
"What the hell is going on?" said Xander.
"I-I don't know." Was all that Gunn could say as Leonard continued to shake and moan.
"We-we've gotta do something." said Robin.
Gunn thought that was a fine idea, he just couldn't think of anything to do that would help. He was about to say so when suddenly Leonard stopped shaking and speaking. Gunn would have considered this good but somehow the abrupt silence seemed worse. It felt like something bad was here... waiting.
"Man, are you--" He never finished because suddenly Leonard grabbed his wrist. His eyes flashed open, and suddenly it seemed that somebody else was in the room. Someone... not very nice.
Leonard began to speak, only it didn't sound like him. It was his voice, but it was sounded.
"In the darkness of futures past
The magician longs to see.
One chance out between two worlds,
Fire, walk with me."
By the time he said those last words, Leonard was standing very tall. There was a smile on his face that Gunn did not like at all. He didn't know what was going on, or what that gibberish meant, but it sounded bad. It sounded evil.
"'Catch you with my death bag,
You may think I've gone insane.
But I promise
I will kill again!"
Leonard began to laugh. A thought flashed through Gunn's head, suddenly, that was so unlike him that he would later wonder where it had come from: That is the laugh of the damned. The laughter lasted only for fifteen seconds or so, but it seemed like an eternity. And then Leonard stopped laughing and he sunk to the floor in a heap.
Gunn turned towards Robin and Xander. With a single look, he knew that they had felt the same thing he had. None of them spoke for a few seconds.
"Aren't you going to help your friend?" a strange voice asked. Suddenly Gunn remembered that they were not the only people in the bar.
"Is he all right?" another person asked.
Suddenly Xander and Robin were in motion. "Yeah, I'm sorry. Leonard...suffers from epilepsy. He just had a seizure. We should get him home." Gunn realized that Xander was pretty good at thinking on his feet. He was certainly doing better than him a man who had dealt with a seer before.
"He'll be okay. We just need to get him out of here." said Robin. By now the three of them had picked up Leonard who hadn't really moved since he had collapsed.
"Leonard? You all right?" The phrase sounded horribly false in his ears. How could anything like whatever that had been possibly be all right.
Gunn helped Robin turned him over. There was still no response. Gunn was about to ask if there was a doctor in the bar and to hell with the consequences when Leonard breathed out.
"That one...was a dilly. They didn't say that was included in the package."
Gunn relaxed a little. It sounded like normal in both tone and message.
"What the hell was that?" Robin asked as he helped Leonard to his feet
"I... don't know. It wasn't like any vision that I ever had. I felt..." He shook his head. "I was there but I wasn't there. I can't explain it better than that."
"What did you see?" asked Xander.
"A lot. More than I thought I could." Leonard shook his head again when Xander began to speak. "It was complicated. So complicated that you're going to wait until we're back at the office. I only want to tell it once."
Gunn actually felt a little relieved. As curious as he was about what Leonard had seen, he wasn't entirely sure that he wanted to know what that voice meant. Upon thinking that, he realized that he must be really creeped out.
He then asked the question that all three of them needed to ask even though they all knew the answer.
"How bad was it?" The question was blunt, the response more so: "As bad as anything you've had to deal with." Leonard paused then added: "Maybe worse"
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Though he hadn't lived as long as some of the people he worked with, Charles Gunn had seen a great deal of things that would have been hard for anyone, with the possible exception of people living in Sunnydale, to believe. Which included fighting the undead on a nightly basis, that he had ended up working to help one of those same undead, that he had seen a pregnant vampire, the sun blotted out, fire rain from the sky, and a couple of apocalypses in the space of a year. Or that he had ended up working at a place that had once represented all the evil that existed in the world. But all those strange things seemed positively normal for the conversation that he was having now.
"Warner Bothers announced that they are going to do a film on the life of Malcolm X to be helmed by Norman Jewison" Leonard Kopell said, taking a sip from his drink. "Spike Lee pops up and says that no white man can do a realistic version of the life of a black man, especially one as prolific as this one."
"You don't think that maybe he has a point?" said Robin Wood, lifting his eyes from the pool table. "Maybe there are some things that only a black man can know ?"
"I am willing to believe that there are certain things that a black man can understand that a white man can't," said Leonard as he put his drink back on the bar, "and that fact may apply in Hollywood. But this is the man who directed 'In The Heat Of The Night' and 'A Soldier's Story.' If there is a white director who is more qualified to tell a story like this, I can't think of him."
"So what are you implying?" asked Xander. "That because a white man does a good job of painting racial harmony in movies, he is more qualified than a black man to tell this story?"
"I am saying that Spike Lee bullied a Hollywood studio and a multiple Academy Award nominee from making a movie so that he could do it himself." Leonard finished his drink. "I found it pretty hard to respect him after I heard that."
In a linear sense, Gunn knew how this discussion of "Malcolm X" had gotten started. He even knew how he had gotten roped into this situation. What he found hard to believe was that the three of them -- men who spent the days and nights fighting against the forces of evil for Angel-Slayer Inc -- were having what was, for all intents and purposes, a normal conversation about something that wasn't related to work. Even odder was the fact that they were all talking like they had been friends for years, when in fact they had known each other for less than a month.
Had it been up to Gunn, he probably wouldn't have been in this situation to begin with. It wasn't that he disliked any of them. This wasn't how he would have preferred to spend one of their all-too few nights off.
The whole scenario had actually been set into motion when Wesley and Willow had each taken Gunn aside and asked him to help with a situation that was bothering them.
Willow had come first. As she had a problem with being direct, it had taken her a couple of minutes to get to the point.
"How have things been working out with Xander?"
Gunn wasn't surprised that Xander's name had come up. Though he wasn't as aware of it as some of the others had been, he had known that Xander was having a difficult time adjusting to the loss of two of the most important women in his life. When Xander had come to him of his own free will and asked if he might work training the Slayers instead of in the science department, Gunn had agreed . He didn't know if this particular change would be ideal, but it was clear from Xander's behavior that he needed to change something that he was doing soon or risk falling to pieces.
Xander had seemed a little livelier after changing jobs (he started showing up to the board meetings more, in any case) but he still didn't seem that animated to Gunn. Apparently Willow had noticed it too.
"Work is only half the problem" she had said. "One of the big things that we always did at home was hang out together. Mainly at the Bronze... we've told you about it, right?"
"Yeah. You want to ask him to go club hopping?"
Willow shook her head. "We've done that. Xander has never had a lot of guy friends. He never complained much about it in Sunnydale, but I know that there were at least a couple of occasions that he said as much. I think now that there are some men that he can hang out with, maybe it would help him regain his balance."
Gunn realized what Willow appeared to be asking. At first he didn't know if he liked the idea. It wasn't about Xander: he thought that the young man had lot of guts and could be very funny . They had a lot of common threads that could make for lively conversation. But he had so little free time that Gunn wondered if he wanted to spend it with somebody that he worked with rather than the old running buddies he didn't see as much. Then he decided that Xander's current problems mattered more then his feelings
So he agreed that he would talk with Xander about it. Before Gunn could ask him, however, he ran into Wesley. That conversation was a little more awkward, as all of them probably would be as long as Fred was still trying to decide which one of them she wanted to be with.
Eventually, he came to the point: "You know about some of the problems we've been having with Leonard."
Gunn nodded. A few weeks after they had officially set up shop as Angel-Slayer Incorporated, Leonard Kopell had arrived on their doorstep. He had revealed that he was something of a seer, particularly in regard to the people who ran their new venture, and therefore was part of their group. The problem was, after they had saved his life, he was not particularly grateful. He didn't particularly want to associate with them and he was reluctant to help them anymore.
"We've been having a real problem trying to work with him."
"The way I heard it, he has the problem." said Gunn. "The guy still doesn't want to hang out with us, right?" Wesley nodded. "You know he may have more sense then the rest of us put together."
"I'm not saying that I don't sympathize with his problem. But there are other issues to factor in. We need his help in order to figure out what this great evil is and we need to convince him that this is a fight worth having."
"So what do you think we should do, Wes? If we're going to say that we're the good guys, we can't bully him into joining us," said Gunn.
"I know." Wesley sighed. "We can't use the stick, so we're going to have use the carrot."
Gunn didn't particularly care for this metaphor (it sounded a little gay) but accepted it as the Watcher's way of talking. "So what, we're going to bribe him into joining us?"
"No. We have to convince him that we're good people. That we are his friends. And that, supernatural trappings aside, we're pretty normal."
"I don't think 'normal' is a word that applies to any of us, but I see your point. What I don't see is what this has to do with me."
Again Wesley seemed flustered.
"Has Willow talked to you about... Xander?"
A picture began to form in Gunn's head. "You know, we've got to figure out a better way to send messages." Before Wesley could speak, Gunn said, "You want me to go to the bookstore where Leonard works and ask him to spend a night out with me and Xander?" Wesley nodded. " "Okay, why is everyone naming me Mr. Swinging Good Times?"
"Because you are as close to being a normal person as anyone here." said Wesley. "The fact is you're the only person here who's made any kind of friends outside of where you work."
Gunn thought this was a pretty high compliment, but decided it was better to be cool. "And that makes me qualified to be a party guy?"
"You're also closer to his age than the rest of us." When Gunn gave Wes a look, he added: "I know that shouldn't matter, but I think it will. You might be able to reach him in ways the rest of us can't."
Right, cause a white boy from Sunnydale and a brother from South Central got so much in common. Gunn thought but did not say. For one thing, it was rather bigoted of him. For another, he knew that it wasn't true -- the man had been seeing visions of him and his friends for three years. They had that in common at least. And last, but certainly not least, he was better at some social things than the others.
So after work he had gone to Murder Press and asked Leonard if he had wanted to go out to dinner. The young man had hesitated for a moment (possibly considering all the hidden reasons that could lie behind the offer) before agreeing.
Later that day, he had asked Xander the same question, casually mentioning that Leonard was coming along. Xander needed less time before agreeing. As an afterthought, and perhaps to balance the fact that he was going out with two white guys, he had asked Robin to come along as well.
Things had started out a little awkwardly at first. Xander had begun the conversation by asking Robin what it had been like to grow up fighting demons without any real powers. Robin had gotten two words into his response when Leonard said: "Hold it."
Everyone had turned to him. He shrugged but after a moment said, "Could we please not talk shop?"
Gunn looked at Leonard. "You know that fighting demons and vampires is at the center of what we do, right?"
"I am perfectly aware of that, Charles." Leonard said using his first name without hesitation. "And I am aware that vampires, witches, boogedy beasties and other assorted things that go bump in the night are at the crux of your work. However, I don't particularly want to spend the entire night out talking about it. That wouldn't go very far towards to convincing me that this is a nice normal place to work, would it?"
Gunn looked at Leonard in shocked, though he wasn't sure if it was because Leonard had figured out the point of this get-together before the others had, or because he had actually out-thought Wesley. "All right. We won't talk about business."
About thirty seconds of awkward silence passed before Xander spoke again. "Gunn," he started awkwardly, "is it really true that you haven't seen a movie since 'Malcolm X'?"
It was a complete 180 from the previous conversation, but Gunn knew that Xander was good at verbal reversals. "Yeah, that's right." . Robin and Leonard looked at Gunn with varying shades of incredulity. Leonard spoke first. "What, have you been so busy fighting demons that you can't go to a movie?"
"Well that's part of it, but mainly I was pissed about Denzel losing the Oscar."
"You've got to be kidding," said Robin.
"You saying that he wasn't robbed?"
"Oh he was robbed, but I didn't let that huge oversight stop me from going to see 'The Fugitive'."
Xander looked at Leonard. "You got a take on this?"
Leonard thought about it. "Well I think that Denzel gave the best performance of the men who were nominated. However, I believe that there were some men who weren't nominated whose work was as good, if not better."
"Really?" Gunn was intrigued. "Who?"
"Well, I'm a bit prejudiced cause I was a big fan, but Jack Lemmon did a hell of a job in 'Glengarry Glen Ross.'
Leonard, it turned out, was a real movie buff. Using this topic as a starting point combined with some of the information from the Wolfram and Hart entertainment division they spent dinner and most of the evening discussing film, film history, the award seasons and the generally poor state of film and television. Pretty soon they were talking as if they had known each other for a long time.
"Spike and Denzel...they don't have contracts with us, do they?" Xander asked.
"No, I checked in on that about a week after we took over." said Gunn. "Wolfram and Hart has been a bit lax in its affirmative action policies. They didn't really start taking on black clients until about three years ago."
"I guess this is one place where we should be glad that equal opportunity doesn't play a big part." said Leonard. "Do you know the names of anyone you do have as clients?"
Robin looked at Leonard. "I thought you didn't want to 'talk shop'."
Leonard looked a little sheepish. "I didn't know this was going to come up."
Gunn took pity on him. "Lorne's in charge of the entertainment division, so he has most of the details."
"I actually asked him about it a week ago." They turned to Xander. "What...I wanted him to confirm a couple of names in music." When the stares continued, he replied: "I wanted to know if Britney Spears was really a client."
"Is she?" asked Robin.
"No, but Christina Aguilera is."
"In the film industry?"
"Let me see: Ridley Scott, Paul Thomas Anderson, Jerry Bruckhiemer, Elizabeth Hurley, Greg Kinnear, John Travolta, Drew Barrymore -- those are the most obvious ones."
"Any studio heads?" asked Gunn.
"Paramount, Universal, Columbia, and someone at DreamWorks signed in '99" said Xander.
Gunn was about to say that explained a lot when he looked over at Leonard. The young man seemed to be zoning out.
"Leonard, you okay?" He turned around.
"Yeah, I just... felt funny all of a sudden. "The kid shrugged it off. "Does Wolfram and Hart have anything to do with the Oscars?"
"I don't know. I think that it depends on the clientele," said Gunn.
"I hope so. There have been some nominations and awards where the only things that make sense is due to supernatural involvement," said Robin.
"I guess we'll never know for certain about these things. It's not like the members of the Arts and Sciences are ever gonna explain anything," said Leonard.
"Actually, something funny happened when Jasmine took over California," Gunn said.
"Yeah, 'cause when a Big Bad is in charge its a laugh-a-minute," said Xander.
"It's just that everybody in L.A. was so polite and receptive, there were a lot of weird things going on," said Gunn. "And at one point, the president of the Academy came on TV and apologized on behalf of the Academy for some snubs."
"What did he say?" Even Robin was curious now,.
"First, he apologized to Peter Jackson for not nominating him for Best Director, then they apologized for not nominating 'Far From Heaven', 'About Schmidt', 'Minority Report' and a lot of the other good films that year." Gunn smiled in remembrance. "They also apologized to Michael Moore for booing him. Then they started apologizing for some of the films that did win."
"Like 'The Hours'?" said Xander. "I could never figure why that film was nominated."
"Actually, they went back a little. I believe they apologized for giving Best Picture to 'Gladiator', 'Braveheart', 'Forest Gump' and 'Dances With Wolves'.".
"But not 'Titanic'?" asked Robin.
Gunn shook his head. "They said they had arranged it so that James Cameron would never be allowed to make another film, and we'll just have to be satisfied with that."
"I'd appreciate having the three hours I spent sitting through that waste of celluloid," said Xander. "Honestly, if it came to a choice between fighting a Chaos demon or seeing the movie again, I'd take the demon. That would be less painful and be over a lot faster."
"Watch it. We're headed back into work and that's out, right Leonard?" There was no response. Gunn was about to speak when he noticed Leonard. He had not only gotten very quiet, he had begun to appear unusually pale. "Leonard, you okay?"
The young man didn't reply right away. Gunn was about to ask again, when Leonard spoke. "I'm sorry. It's just. I feel...like something's coming."
The others gathered around, all of them knowing what this could mean. "Do you feel a vision coming on?" asked Robin.
"I don't know. Maybe. It doesn't feel like a vision. It seems... stronger somehow. Like some force was... comiiiiiiiiiiii-"
Gunn had watched Cordelia have visions for two years before she had become part demon. And even after Leonard had told him that his visions were nothing like hers, he still thought that his would at least seem familiar when they hit. Now as Leonard's voice began to simultaneously trail off and grow longer, he realized for the first time that this was a whole new ballgame..
"iiiiiaaaaahhhhaa...." Suddenly Leonard fell to the ground, quivering like a plate of gelatin. Xander and Robin moved with Gunn to pick him up
"What the hell is going on?" said Xander.
"I-I don't know." Was all that Gunn could say as Leonard continued to shake and moan.
"We-we've gotta do something." said Robin.
Gunn thought that was a fine idea, he just couldn't think of anything to do that would help. He was about to say so when suddenly Leonard stopped shaking and speaking. Gunn would have considered this good but somehow the abrupt silence seemed worse. It felt like something bad was here... waiting.
"Man, are you--" He never finished because suddenly Leonard grabbed his wrist. His eyes flashed open, and suddenly it seemed that somebody else was in the room. Someone... not very nice.
Leonard began to speak, only it didn't sound like him. It was his voice, but it was sounded.
"In the darkness of futures past
The magician longs to see.
One chance out between two worlds,
Fire, walk with me."
By the time he said those last words, Leonard was standing very tall. There was a smile on his face that Gunn did not like at all. He didn't know what was going on, or what that gibberish meant, but it sounded bad. It sounded evil.
"'Catch you with my death bag,
You may think I've gone insane.
But I promise
I will kill again!"
Leonard began to laugh. A thought flashed through Gunn's head, suddenly, that was so unlike him that he would later wonder where it had come from: That is the laugh of the damned. The laughter lasted only for fifteen seconds or so, but it seemed like an eternity. And then Leonard stopped laughing and he sunk to the floor in a heap.
Gunn turned towards Robin and Xander. With a single look, he knew that they had felt the same thing he had. None of them spoke for a few seconds.
"Aren't you going to help your friend?" a strange voice asked. Suddenly Gunn remembered that they were not the only people in the bar.
"Is he all right?" another person asked.
Suddenly Xander and Robin were in motion. "Yeah, I'm sorry. Leonard...suffers from epilepsy. He just had a seizure. We should get him home." Gunn realized that Xander was pretty good at thinking on his feet. He was certainly doing better than him a man who had dealt with a seer before.
"He'll be okay. We just need to get him out of here." said Robin. By now the three of them had picked up Leonard who hadn't really moved since he had collapsed.
"Leonard? You all right?" The phrase sounded horribly false in his ears. How could anything like whatever that had been possibly be all right.
Gunn helped Robin turned him over. There was still no response. Gunn was about to ask if there was a doctor in the bar and to hell with the consequences when Leonard breathed out.
"That one...was a dilly. They didn't say that was included in the package."
Gunn relaxed a little. It sounded like normal in both tone and message.
"What the hell was that?" Robin asked as he helped Leonard to his feet
"I... don't know. It wasn't like any vision that I ever had. I felt..." He shook his head. "I was there but I wasn't there. I can't explain it better than that."
"What did you see?" asked Xander.
"A lot. More than I thought I could." Leonard shook his head again when Xander began to speak. "It was complicated. So complicated that you're going to wait until we're back at the office. I only want to tell it once."
Gunn actually felt a little relieved. As curious as he was about what Leonard had seen, he wasn't entirely sure that he wanted to know what that voice meant. Upon thinking that, he realized that he must be really creeped out.
He then asked the question that all three of them needed to ask even though they all knew the answer.
"How bad was it?" The question was blunt, the response more so: "As bad as anything you've had to deal with." Leonard paused then added: "Maybe worse"
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